Bloggers' Quilt Festival Spring 2012

This is a very exciting post for me!

Ever since I got into quilting 18 months ago I've been a massive fan of quilting blogs and last spring I noticed posts popping up about the Bloggers' Quilt festival run by the wonderful Amy of Amy's Creative side.  I became a follower and looked forward to the Autumn Festival, with good reason - so many wonderful inspiring quilts.

So when I started this blog at the beginning of 2012 one of the things I was really looking forward to was taking part in these fantastic online quilt shows.

But I've spent the last couple of days pondering which quilt to enter - part of me wants to feature my 'best' quilt so far but at the same time many of the stories I've most enjoyed from past festivals have been those with a story.

So in the end I've decided to show you the Monkey quilt.

This quilt was made last year for my 4 year old son.  I made my first ever quilt for my 2yr old daughter and then I had made several quilts that I gave as baby gifts and was in the process of making another baby quilt when he asked if that was 'his' quilt.

I hadn't even thought about making him a quilt! Queue a dose of mother's guilt and a scramble to find some fabric he would really like.

I settled on Lollipop by Sandy Gervais for Moda as he is a massive fan of monkeys - his favourite softie is a monkey (called Monkey - we are not good at thinking up names in this house, we also have Blue Bear, Red Ted and Big Dog).  I bought some bundles in the cream, brown, turquoise and yellow colours on ebay and the seller was kind enough to send me the panel for free.

But these were not standard fat quarters but rather scraps (albeit big ones) that she was selling off.  So then I had a bit of a dilemma - up to that point I'd always used patterns and pre-cuts so I'd not had to figure out fabric quantities of how to put them together.

So after a bit of surfing I came across Oh Fransson's Mod Sampler pattern which I reckoned I could make work if I used the block designs and substituted the panel in the centre.  I then spent the next couple of evenings working out which fabrics I had sufficient of to make which blocks.  I added half square triangle blocks as I wanted to try them out and then I got cutting.

Amazingly for my first attempt at 'quilt maths' it all came together pretty well.  There was a slight hiccup - you can probably see that the panel is chopped off at top and bottom, unnecessarily as it turned out, as I'd got mixed up with seam  allowances.  So then I had to increase the sashing width at the top and bottom.

But none of that mattered to the Wee Chap who has loved this quilt from the moment it was finished.  It is the most used quilt I've made and he asks to be wrapped up in it whenever he is cold, tired or sad. And that to me is the best thing about quilting!

If you are here from the festival I hope you will stay and look around and if not then head over there and browse the 400+ fantastic quilts.

Sarah